Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Genetic Similarity to Other Apes Insufficient to Justify Rights Extension
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- Genetic Similarity to Other Apes Insufficient to Justify Rights Extension
Genetic Similarity to Other Apes Insufficient to Justify Rights ExtensionGIVING RIGHTS TO APE’S IS FLAWED – GENETIC SIMILARITIES ARE IRRELEVANT Ilana Mercer, analyst for the Free-Market News Network. 2003 “No Rights for Animals” Worldnet Daily http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35022 Animal-rights advocates – some of whom even walk upright and have active frontal lobes – argue, for instance, that because the great apes share a considerable portion of our genetic material, they are just like human beings, and ought to be given human rights. As of yet, though, Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Anthony J. Leggett are not the names of lower primates – they are the names of the 2003 Nobel Prize winners in physics. No matter how many genes these men share with monkeys and no matter how sentient chimps are, the latter will never contribute anything to "the theory of superconductors and superfluids," or author a document like the "Declaration of Independence," much less tell good from bad. Given that human beings are so vastly different in mental and moral stature from apes, the lesson from any genetic similarities the species share is this and no more: A few genes are responsible for very many incalculable differences! Unlike human beings, animals by their nature are not moral agents. They possess no free will, no capacity to tell right from wrong, and cannot reflect on their actions. While they often act quite wonderfully, their motions are merely a matter of conditioning. Since man is a rational agent, with the gift of consciousness and a capacity to scrutinize his deeds and chart his actions, we hold him culpable for his transgressions. A human being's exceptional ability to discern right from wrong makes him punishable for any criminal depravity. Man's nature is the source of the responsibility he bears for his actions. It is also the source of his rights. Human or individual rights, such as the rights to life, liberty and property, are derived from man's innate moral agency and capacity for reason. “COMMON ANCESTRY” DOESN’T JUSTIFY GREAT APE PROJECT Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 106 Today’s nonhuman apes don’t represent earlier stages in human development. Our common ape-like ancestor lived about 15 million years ago. About six million years ago, human and chimpanzee evolution parted. Chimpanzees didn’t prepare the way for us any more than we prepared the way for them. The notion of higher and lower beings lacks scientific validity. In an 1858 letter, Charles Darwin expressed his intention “carefully to avoid” referring to some animals as “higher” than others. Elsewhere he penciled this reminder to himself: “Never the use the words higher and lower.” As stated by two neuroscientists, ranking species in some linear order that suggests evolutionary progress makes “no sense” and has “no scientific status.” FACT THAT OTHER APES ARE LIKE HUMANS DOESN’T MAKE HUMAN RIGHTS APPROPRIATE FOR THEM Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 57 Analogy is a treacherous form of argument. Chimpanzees are like human beings, therefore, so far as Wise is concerned, giving animals rights is like giving black people the rights of white people. But chimpanzees are like human beings in some respects but not in others that may be equally or more relevant to the issue of whether to give chimpanzees rights, and legal rights have been designed to serve the needs and interests of human beings, having the usual human capacities, and so make a poor fit with the needs and interests of animals. Genetic Similarity to Other Apes Insufficient to Justify Rights ExtensionGENETIC CLOSENESS TO HUMANS IS NOT A JUSTIFICATION FOR LIMITING RIGHTS PROTECTION TO GREAT APES Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 115 All sentient beings need and deserve the basic rights that GAP seeks for nonhuman great apes. Life, liberty and freedom from pain are as relevant to bullfrogs and snakes as to bonobos. In fact, I can’t think of any basic right that applies to nonhuman great apes but doesn’t also apply to all sentient beings. Turtles and walruses don’t need freedom of speech or a right to vote, but neither do chimpanzees and gorillas. A nonhuman’s genetic closeness to humans isn’t germane. Other great apes “most resemble us in their capacities and their ways of living,” Cavalieri and Singer state. Humans are “intelligent beings with a rich and varied social and emotional life.” Because they “share” these characteristics, “our fellow great apes” deserve “moral equality.” No, nonhuman great apes deserve moral equality because they’re sentient. Their degree of intelligence, sociability or emotionality isn’t relevant. GENETIC SIMILARITY NOT NECESSARILY CORRELATED WITH HOW MUCH WE “LIKE” THE ANIMALS Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 62-3 Oddly, sentimental attachmen to animals is not well correlated with genetic closeness, as is implicit in my noting that we can like some animals more than we like people. We are more closely related genetically to chimpanzees than to cats or dogs or falcons or leopards, but some of us like chimpanzees less than these other animals, and we might prefer, for example, to have medical experiments conducted on chimpanzees than on these other species, though the relative pain that experiments inflict on different species of animals, as well as differential medical benefits from experiments on different species, would be a relevant factor to most of us. If chimpanzees’ greater intelligence increases the suffering that they undergo a subjects of medical experiments, relative to less intelligent animals, the increment in suffering may trump our affection for certain “cuter” animals. To the extent that the happiness of certain animals is bound up with our own happiness, there is, as I have just noted, a utilitarian basis for animal rights (though “rights” is not the best term here) even if the only utility that a utilitarian is obligated to try to maximize is human utility.
Lesley J. Rogers & Gisela Kaplan, Professors of Neuroscience and Animal Behavior, University of New England, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 179-80 The second pint of relevance to this argument is that similarity of genetic material is determined by mixing together two DNA samples in a test tube (hybridizing them) and then measuring how much the strands of DNA match. This tells us about the code and the potential of the genetic material, but it does not tell us exactly which genes are expressed (i.e., are functional). Not all genes are expressed at any one time or, indeed ever expressed during a lifetime. When we speak of intelligence or any other aspect of brain function, we are referring to the aspects of the individual that result from those genes that are actually expressed. Two factors influence which genes are expressed: the course of the evolution and the influence of the environment. Thus, to put it simply, two species may have the same genes but it may be expressed in only one of those species. The net effect is two very different functional states. Hence, genetic similarity may be an indicator of functional similarity but it cannot stand alone as the criterion on which we should base arguments for fundamental divisions between species.
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